Colossians 3:1–17 // Setting the mind on things above // Joe Valenti
I don’t often get lost.
I have a pretty good sense of direction, and I tend to pay attention to landmarks. Once I’ve been somewhere once or twice, I can usually find my way around without much trouble. But a few years ago, on the way home from spring break, I messed up pretty badly.
We left the Charlotte area early that morning, headed back toward Cleveland. It’s a straight shot—Route 77 all the way home. Somewhere along the way, I got caught up in a conversation with Linda. At some point, I glanced up and noticed a sign telling me how close we were to Knoxville. That’s when I realized what had happened.
There’s a confusing interchange in Wytheville, Virginia where you actually have to exit in order to stay on Route 77. If you’re not paying close attention, you end up drifting onto a completely different highway. And that’s exactly what I had done.
I’m grateful we noticed when we did. Otherwise, we might have accidentally taken a second vacation in Knoxville.
Sometimes we need purposeful moments to look up from the busyness of life and pay attention to where we actually are. Lent gives us that kind of gracious interruption—a chance to pause long enough to ask whether our lives are headed in the right direction, and if they aren’t, to reorient ourselves.
Colossians 3 invites us into that work.
Paul is writing to people who already belong to Jesus. He isn’t questioning their faith or challenging their sincerity. He’s reminding them of something foundational: their lives have been fundamentally changed by what they have received in Christ. That reality comes first. Before anything is said about what needs to change, Paul grounds everything in who they already are.
This matters because what Paul goes on to address—habits, desires, speech, attitudes—flows from that deeper reality. The doing grows out of the being. Reorientation always starts there.
When we put our spiritual lives on autopilot, we don’t usually make dramatic, intentional turns in the wrong direction. We drift. We end up becoming people we never meant to be, doing things we don’t really want to do, often before we’ve even realized what’s happening. Like missing a crucial exit, the shift can feel small in the moment but significant over time.
Lent invites us to stop and take an honest look at where we’ve been headed.
Paul encourages that kind of attention by naming things that no longer belong in our lives—patterns of desire, speech, and anger that distort our vision and shape us in ways that don’t reflect Christ. Noticing these things requires slowness and honesty. It means paying attention to what is actually happening beneath the surface rather than rushing past it.
But reorientation doesn’t stop with removal.
Paul also points us toward what needs to take shape in us instead—humility, kindness, patience, forgiveness, and love. These aren’t behaviors we force into existence through willpower. They emerge as our lives become aligned again with the truth of who we are in Christ. As our attention shifts, so does our posture.
Lent is not about achieving moral clarity all at once. It’s about noticing where we’ve drifted and gently turning back. It’s about letting Christ reorient our vision so that our lives begin to move, slowly and steadily, in a truer direction.
Sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is simply look up and ask, Where am I headed right now?
A Question to Consider:
Where might your life have been running on autopilot lately, and what signs suggest that you may need to reorient your attention?
Prayer Prompt:
Ask God to help you see clearly where you are right now—without defensiveness or fear. Invite Him to gently redirect your heart and to shape in you what reflects His life and love. Sit with Him in quiet, trusting that even small course corrections matter.
